On the write track

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For most children, walking into a bookstore full of colourful storybooks is a delightful experience. Harry Potter, Enid Blyton, Tintin, Grimms’ Fairytales, Tinkle, Noddy, Archies… one could almost be at a loss which book to pick up, if not all.

The same experience, however, can be a daunting one for a child born with the Sturge-Weber Syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which the afflicted person has difficulty in reading and recognising words.
Now, a group of individuals have come together to make reading a fun experience for children with learning disability (LD). What started as a chain-email by Bala Narayanaswamy, whose 14-year-old son Vinayak suffers from LD, was taken up as an initiative by Bodhisatwa Dasgupta, an advertising professional at Grey Worldwide.
With the help of his colleagues, he has launched the Dolch Project. Its aim: to invite writers to pen down short stories for children with LD. Sounds simple? The catch is to write stories using only those words available in the Dolch List, which children with LD recognise.
The Dolch word list was prepared by Edward William Dolch in the 1930s. Comprising 220 words that children with LD can easily recognise, the list was originally published in Edward’s book, Problems in Reading, in 1948. It was about a year ago that Dasgupta received a mail from a friend. It was a forward by Narayanaswamy asking people in the literary field to come together to write short stories for these children.
“At first I was reluctant as I was already doing another project at that time. Besides, I knew absolutely nothing about learning disability. I had to first read up on it, talk to people about it, which is what I did shortly after. I spoke to counsellors and understood the problem better. The idea of Dolch Project did start in my head, but it’s a Grey Worldwide initiative now because there are so many people involved,” Dasgupta says. The project has received widespread response, both from writers and parents. So far, the team has received more than 80 stories, with a few writers contributing more than one. All the stories have been put up on the group’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/projectdolch [2]).
The writers have been given a 20 per cent concession of using non-Dolch words, since the broader aim is to build up reading ability in the child and hence help him/her learn new words.
Children’s author Pooja Lulla has written a 234-word Christmas story titled The Christmas Party. “It’s about Santa Claus’ brown horse who doesn’t want to work on Christmas day because it’s all snowy and cold and how Santa is helped instead by a bear, pig and sheep in distributing gifts to children,” Lulla says. Clearly, writing a story using a limited set of words was no easy task.
“As an author you are used to using as many words as possible. But this experience was different as I had a limited set of words at my disposal. I had to keep the Dolch list open and keep referring to it to check my word usage,” she adds. Although at its nascent stage, the project has received large support from parents and counsellors.
Says Narayanaswamy, a consultant at Ipsos research, “The Dolch project forcefully propels the idea forward, combining as it does, an interesting challenge and an interesting purpose.” Dasgupta aims to compile all the stories into a book and in the long run get it published in regional languages. “This is a big project and it will take time to unfold. Right now we are aiming at a child who has access to school, institution, special classes etc. since it is there s/he will pick up new words and learn about the Dolch list. When we take the project farther, into regional languages, we will target the economically poorer sections who can’t read English,” he says about the group’s long-term plans.
For now, children like Vinayak can enjoy the joys of reading storybooks like any other kids their age, thanks to Project Dolch.